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[edenspoem]

𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝: 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠. (𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐞)

summary. | next chapter (tba). you're expecting—and ellie is sick in love. one thing inhibits her: she thinks it isn't requited.

reader discretion is advised. mdni. fluff. a punch of angst: one instance of abuse. mentions of previous. pregnant!reader. jackson!loser!ellie. damaged relationship with a man explicit (for the plot.) the pining creeps in. strangers to lovers (in the future). requited but assumed unrequited love. cheesy romance scenes. evident undertones of addiction: substance mention, cannabis, strained relationships (ellie and joel common occurence. reader and their scumbag bf too). a realistic motherhood. depression. apprehension. you get it. wc: 4.3k. series masterlist.

note.

based on this anon i got. shoutout to @serqphites fr. art in header creds to @nramv. thanks to @s-4pphics for proofreading this one for me! join the discord to see content such as this in creation.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐬 

It is the thought that stomachs you.

“Shit,” you curse and bite the mouth that does. Mindless thing. “He’s gonna murder you, damn idiot.”

Control is contraception. You kneel your head to the faucet, its trickle the thing that embraces your ears; if you could crawl out of one, you would. Here is said to be simple. Here is an embellished free port. These people, neighbours and founders—elders, to be exacting for spiteful whims, sold the idea that you would have support and homes to crash in outside your own if it did ever crumble to the ground. Bandages to bleed in. But the shameful wound is open, unclosing. No one wants to account for a burden that isn’t their consequence.

You had a dream in the palm of your hand.

But what is wanted—is not for sale. You just assume control over disorder. It happens to a girl at least once, right? That dreadful blue in the sound once you learn for sure that you lost to it: to nature.

You wash the vacant spot.

Fucking pregnant.

It felt possible the first run to the toilet. Then, too terrible to be a lie the third roundabout. Vomit litters the porcelain basin.

Cat figured something was up before you caught this nauseous spell. She mentioned and argued that your constant trips to the bathroom were irregular, and you made light and nodded in a sunlit direction. Capering under its false pretense. “Yeah, what about it?” you segued, but not without heel-stumbling. Frou-frou foxes in Midsummer fires, your all-differentiating, all-time repeat from the Cocteau Twins; the radio thrummed with its rounding lulls and ethereals around a crowded living room, a whirling concoction for your hapless intoxication. Bird without its wings.

So is it the alcohol, or the condition—hurling you over the toilet bowl?

Either consequence creeps up from intestinal serpentining, as you pull apart your own single-headed carelessness. Who to blame, other than the carrier, right? Shit, well, a condom was used. You made with that precaution. So, are you the luckless one percent, or is the old-world hiding something important about fucking contraception? Can one girl be—ill-fated to this? You cocoon against the cupboards, slipping down the hinges, the knobs and indents. “Shit,” repeats your stunned mouth, quieter this time. 

The walls seem to listen; a disagreeing wind quivers the window.

Even if you weren’t a statistic: the abandoned alcohol, now advantaged and emptied, returned to its fine-china neighbors in your father’s parlor, is evidence. Chastisement waiting to scream. He hates parties—and with much less than a tolerant grunt, hates girls who attend them. It seems sensible; Cat is a regular host, and he chastises your friendship. 

Not her. You, being her friend.

Cat sighed, mashing the butt of her cig into a bisected can. The nutritions label was faded. “You’re a damn wreck,” within amusement, she scolded. But it was not without a heartstopper. She laughed, “If you end up pregnant, ‘m not watching the little shit. Get enougha’ that out of daycare to take it home with me as well. Damn it.” and it tore your stomach open; the organ pummeled into your serpentine guts, and the deafening throb frightened itself higher. You could taste what wanted to come up.

You swallowed. “Pregnant?” Concentrated on the purple under sienna-brown eyes. Distraction meant the world, in that moment.

She nodded—and shrugged, an unsure note. “Just a hypothetical.” 

Fuck you, psychic.

The guilt was beginning to make itself felt. You relapsed, in a heartfelt confession, to a state of adolescence this evening. “You’re so goddamn selfish!” It is one thing to be treated as innocent; Mateo could be condescending at times, but to be spoken at like a cruel, bird-brained and intentioned child, and with innocence, crushed you. He argued that wanting to keep this pregnancy—after you gave him the boot—was not your moral to preach while consequences were afoot. “Do you really think you have it in you to be a mother?”

Fetal termination exists, still, in the apocalypse. At life-threatening costs. That was reason enough to let nature take its pathological course.

One tremble. “Yes.” You are a child again.

You can see it in his lineaments. He flinches his person in disgust, hundred somethings held under his tongue. “If you want to believe that.” The air is too pure for him. He rifles the cartridges on his wardrobe for a lighter, joint in the opposite hand. He takes a drag, hides his face with the pungent result, and espies the resentment shining your under-eyes with less care than before; these are just crocodile tears to him. “Sure,” he shrugs.

Then his attention drops a little lower than your chest, a brief change of heart. You feel the need to crawl inside your arms. More than ever.

He points with the smoldering dog-end. Silence snaps. “Not mine.” Flicking it to enunciate himself. The discarded state of him, and his disclaim, leaves a bitter taste in your mouth—if not the entire esophageal hole. Your lungs: filled with his exhaust. “Go find some other dude to blame. M’sure you had a couple who..” The joint finds its purpose again. “Might happen to look a little more identical,” he accuses.

You left before the air became his.

Time does not bring relief; the emptiness in your bed does anything but suffer silence. The growing hours are loud, and Jackson is still a paradise to some who are convinced it has its comforts.

You all have lied.

𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐡

“Of course he went and narced on her to her father!” 

Jackson is outside the rest of America. Yes, it craters in national alpines, but it was a roadside seedling at the end of the last generation. Wood rotted to cordyceps in its neighbors; this place was given a second life. The standing tables here in the one and alone bar—the famous, aliased Bison—are so red, so wood-strong, so anointed with caring hands, you can catch a glimpse of yourself in it. 

Cat treats it with the same purpose as if it were decades ago, and nothing ever happens here; she slams her lighter and pint glass down on it—pissed to express the least of the most. “Who else does shit like that?”

Despite the fact that Cat is virtually your sister from another mother, you went to Jesse about the argument first. He isn't a volatile pipe bomb with ears and earful intentions that create more harm, not good; she absolutely fucking is. One mention, and her fingertips are spitting fire. Cast iron doesn't even get near hot enough as the hands that share a piece of her trouble-starved mind.

But, she found out regardless. Not that you should ever stop her from; on some occasions, she has the right.

Jesse left your big news out of it, though. Not his right to tell.

“His corner of the town,” Jesse adds, his soft fingers around his glass, and up to his splitting mouth. He glances round the booth in search of all attention. Sure of it, he piled on. “Got a lotta assholes with the same notions in mind.” Chuting a sip of wine—a drink which lost its romantic significance to casual consumption, on par with beer—down his gullet.

Slow, agreeing nods pass around until another lip chips in. “Fucking dick.” Ellie, with the fullest glass, and untethered fingers tapping about the rim, has her head resting low on one fist, doubled over the curl-leaf surface. 

Jesse scoffed. “Tell me about it.” Sardonic sort of response—to her short, but symptomatic one. He leans in his corner and trains the attention on her, a question in his squint. “Say, Ellie, you dealt with him on occasion, right? When he collaborated with Eugene. All that weed?”

She hates to hear it. “Just one time.” In her head—her head when it escapes out here into social wilderness—she was a good girl. Clean, rectified, an adolescent state of mind, and it has the whole world to do with Joel and learning to forgive. It is the least bit detectable on the outside, but she really is doing better than before. Rough-faced or not. “What about it?” She looks up, at last, the perfect shrug to her cross-question.

“Was she even there?”

Ellie crumpled up having to account for that one time; wrinkles in the brows, a snagged or yawning mouth, post-insomniac ripples and redness in her optic profile. Imagine an irate basset hound.“Reno?” She means your given alias: Reno, or Nevada, your origins. And she is Boston, or Massachusetts. “No, not at all.”

“See, he makes that shit up all the time,” Cat interludes. “First it was Justice, then it was me who he ratted out to Maria. Stopped trading with him after.” 

Jesse has not traded once, or thought to smoke pot once, but he agrees. “Mhm.” A man of no judgement—when it comes to friends.

Sunset is climbing and pushing to stoop in the apertures of the table. The lithe, gold tadpole-ends creeping in, beating over faces, and so the restaurant had its lights switched on to make up for those recalcitrant pockets; soft, water-black mottles in the deeper corners. Ellie laced fists, cupping one around the other, and a particular string of light dug for this vulnerable formation. She has a heap to process in her own head; the sudden silence, deafening.

Shifting to his elbows, Jesse rests his well-slept eyes on her—a sore sight. “Gonna finish that?” He points, withheld fingers stretching for his own glass.

She clicks her tongue to her teeth. “Nah,” responding with whatever is left in her, a breath or a reaching-more. The glass grates as she hardly straightens her fingers to push it aside. “Tastes different.”

The claim draws out the doubt from their faces. “Tastes the same as before,” Jesse professes as he rolls the last droplets of his wine past his lips and along the columns of his throat, replacing his grip with the full glass of scotch, sunlight streaming through the liquid with blonde lines against nectar-gold. Her choice of spirits. “I best be joinin’ Seth in the kitchen. Have fun, ladies.” He crawls knee-first from the booth.

Cat shoots an astonished sneer, one he cannot see or sense in his bones as his legs were haste to vault the counter. 

Ellie does, though. And she is too low-spirited to guess what for and laugh; a strange demeanor. “Hmm?”

“He'll be drunk on the job,” she clarifies. “But, I guess it's up to who cares. Not enough for me to keep watch.” And she, too, sidles out from the cornered booth, leather brushing against denim. Watching Jesse vanish behind the crowded bar made her suppose it's that time; the fading sun calls you home, and when it does, you go home. Nothing more to it in Jackson. “See ya, geek.”

She waves with an unprepared hand. “Yup. See you too..”

The jog home was not without its usual discomforts. Paths, loved still by a residual winter, were hard not to slip on. The unhesitating side-eyes were too common to dash out of their sight. Ellie is aware of what has them wringing their necks just to look at her, but as it continued, she just accepted it. 

Her hoodie is half-sufficient. “Fuckin’ warm up already,” she curses, digging both fists into her pockets for warmth outside the steeple church. She notices three distinct paraphernalia in her pocket when her knuckles hit the seam: the larger, thicker one is obvious—Joel's watch. She inherited it on her own terms when he wasn't there. “Ow! Shit!” The cracked dial case nicks her for her mindlessness.

Second one is a mechanical lighter. Last time she wore this hoodie, she was squinting back the tears after telling Joel she didn't need his fucking help.

Ellie pinches the thinner, paper-textured item, and pulls it out with no clue to what it might be. This should be a simple guess.

Old feelings rush when she sees it in-between her fingers.

“Fuck.”

The word goes quiet in the night. Surrounding sycamores rustle, listening, and they respond with the eerie wind that rouses through their crown-shying bough. Invisible hands dislodge the strand from behind her ear.

Something shifts in her to listen in return.

She raises her chin. Gazes into pitch-blackness with a racing heart; her trees are there somewhere. Under the hole of light up there.

Ellie believed, from a very naive and insignificant age, that she was born and fell from the bough of a tree. The idea has some flesh and blood to it; her mother is unknown to her. She has the head of hair of the autumn sycamores, burning oranges, and delightful greens. Too green yet; left without the hour to decide what living meant and what her reason was to begin doing so—to live. She was given a gun before she was given a purpose. At least to her, matured and ripened, that is how it seems. Little bit careless considering her important condition; did Marlene think it through? Looking up into the same blanket of nothingness, she ponders whether reigniting this bad habit would still get her to the moon or not—if the world ever returned to pre-apocalypse.

From the hour you're born, you begin to die.

Simone de Beauvoir.

“Make it seven?” quoting herself, she slots the pointed end of the joint in-between her fresh-licked, rose-kissed lips and hopes she suffers no bite from it in the future. “Fuck it.” The watch becomes the last thing in her pocket. Flick, flick.

Her lungs fill with nostalgia.

“Ah..”

And puff.

She purses her mouth into an open ring, the somber, but lit against its will, night stolen from her sight in a cloud of white. It ebbs the stress in her she had not noticed was beginning to pulse again, searching for her heart with a pair of circling fingers. She palms her chest down. Maybe this is what the wind was telling her.

Ellie is nowhere near stoned, but swears she can feel it slowing. Easing her into something good, this time around. It feels good to have faith in something true.

Silence bends, not snaps. It fits in the gentle start of sobs, a dreadful blue sound, enough to interrupt her star-watching. She pierces around the grassplot for a source and sees the woman of the hour. 

Guitar strums pick up in the wind.

She recognises who it is.

The sniffles reel her over. You see a pair of slow-strolling converse, scratching the ground upon steps, before you see the person. She stands an illuminated silhouette under stelliform, globe-string lanterns, the same ones from the winter dance a week ago that no one has thought to disassemble, several feet from your place on this bench. 

Her heart has no reason to be thumping.

Strange, the smoke coming from her mouth, like a gun, is not unsettling—it should be. It parts when it clears. “Hey.” Her hesitant voice pricks your skin with goosebumps. Thinned-out, mint eyes at first glance harsh, but gentle at the second; the tired under-beds of purple is a prevalent stigma, but the shining pupil crawling over her iris struck this overwhelming sense of being understood. The soft structure of her face clasps them. 

She looks at you like she has no clue what you are, but in the same glance has been raptured with an idea of what you could be. Creature to creature.

Watching, for a long time.

You wipe the cold under your nose onto your sleeve. Hesitant as she is. “Oh, have I taken your spot?” The first thing that comes to mind rolls from your tongue. You begin to collect yourself without an answer.

She stutters, her mouth ahead of her thoughts. “No, n-no! You're totally fine.” Hand freeing from her pocket to pause you. 

She seems sweet.

Her curious eyes drop to where your arms are tangled—sheathed around yourself. You haven't moved them since.

Ellie cannot handle these lingering pre-spring conditions, even in her getup. The white avenues are gone but the winds have fought abating, the worst of the weather at night. In your case, a thin cardigan, she can only imagine.

She thumbs her hem. “Are you cold?”

You register that it might seem that way shooting a once-over glimpse of her collar—blue plaid poking through. To be honest, the cool air slipping under and around the hemlines hasn't occurred to you until she made a scene of it.

“Here,” she quietens, rustling in her layers. The slate-grey hoodie is folded outside-in and being offered before you can protest your independence. Nothing but misunderstandings have come between you and her. Charitable ones. “Keep it. I need to clean out my wardrobe, as others would say, anyway.”

It is a small, nothing-much distraction, but you wonder who others are to her. Good, or damaged too?

Someone once said: it's more trouble to refuse help where it is cost-free. You decide to trust that sentiment and crawl from your arms, reluctant to reply. “Too many hoodies?” Letting a glint of light peek through, you let something slip identical to a laugh. It sounds so unfamiliar.

Hers sounds perfect. “No, uh—sneakers, actually. Been told I have too many pairs.” She laughs again. You adjust the hoodie around your waist.

Your ears ride on the grace of that laugh. Replay, replay, and replay it in your head to the point your eyes are staring absent-minded and the colors on her person begin to remind you of a sycamore in autumn. Her deep-auburn burns with the lantern glow, the collected bundle of mane under the hind of her head an incurious shadow still. You wonder if it comes from her mother, or her father: the fire. “Yeah, been there.” Your answer has no substance to it either; you have nothing but a couple worn-out pairs. Your mouth is just saying things—the mindless thing.

Her mouth line shrinks from its last laugh. She now smiles small, with a feature she can't wipe off curling. “Yeah.” She catches your timid voice and echoes it, glancing down before she releases the joint in her fingers to the ground, squashing it under her sneaker. She twists it around, a mix of earth and ash scraping.

It blows a kiss of smoke.

Reminds you of those stump puffballs—mushrooms, bubbling in the depressions of dead or decaying wood, that puff green when puttered at by an early curiousness. One enveloped the tip of your shoe with it when you were little: stretching your underdeveloped leg that managed to reach once through a metal fence peeled at the sides, making squeamish cries when the thing of nature fumed. Memories do return full circle.

She leans an inch on her toes, still absorbed with the ground. The orange roots of her lashes catch that same fire. 

Who is she?

For a small town, you should know; there are a few hundred faces in Jackson. But hers is not one you can remember. It seems misplaced. Her brown freckles are symptomatic of the sun. She lets quiet drapings of stress hang from her tear corners to her anti-brows, not so conventional for her age, but unafraid. Her stares are soft, and don't make you feel like a gullible child or a faithless woman.

She looks like she was born in the springtime, but made for October.

“Thanks, again.” You tire restless from that word. Said too often, heard too often. When will there be more? 

You notice her half-arm tattoo right as it gets concealed, the strange comfort pulling her ruched, blue sleeves to her wrists. She pins the hems into her palms with her fingers. “It's nothin’,” she humbles. Her lips and nostrils are redder when she abandons her focus from the ground. No doubt she burns without trying in the summer. “Uh, I should be going—now.” She sidles in a direction and you feel urged to follow with your eyes. She uses her arm in a nervous toss to demonstrate where she is headed. “Do me a favor and get home safe, yeah?”

“Of course.” You watch with a farewell smile, a sweet shape creeping on your lips you can't stop. Maybe, you don't want to. Then, remembering one thing important to you, the so-called sweet mouth curses again. “Fuck, her name!”

You hope the two of you stumble into each other again, on some distant morning or near night. And learn her name, just not at your lowest.

Those guitar strings stop with no one around.

𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧

Late night dislodges from the space ahead and is punctured with light. Slipping through the door, closing it behind, a home of damaged goods that should feel familiar and smell of floral nothings repulses you at the entrance. You catch it as soon as it hits—alcohol, marijuana.

Mateo. 

Your throat burns from the scent.

His presence becomes known through a sharp shout. “Fuck took you so long?” It stabs through the house, the walls thin enough to not be considered in this, or his, material world. 

His rage begins to beat, one foot after the other, on the hardwood floors, and your hand returns to where it felt it was needed. Hoodie fabric—that smells nothing like here, or him—is palmed in-between. Your heart pumps with fear and knowing; God is not restless to punish, but a darker, closer, corporeal counterpart is and he steals you from this life on earth, and he tells you that you have not suffered enough. The stranger in this hoodie is your tether. 

But, after that fleeting conversation with the girl in the common acres, you feel you have known her for ages—and you're dating a stranger.

Swallow your pride and knowledge. He will smite you for it. “Um, Cat.” Quick, quick, the lump goes. But slow, slow, the lie creeps and is hesitant to be heard, afraid of its flaws. You turn to the kitchen before his ugly, three-headed emergence, running a hand over the budding holes of flowers. Jesse cut them from his garden, a secret congratulations from him and his mother. “She went to Bison and called me along. Time gotta-'head of us in there. Sorry, baby,” you stall, trembling.

The drunken stench gets worse. You cough but the air is all the same.

His footsteps take a pause at what you sense to be the fridge, a thimble distance. The kitchen, entrance, and couch are all subsided into one long room and aren't interrupted with inessential walls. Trailer gradient. It is not so glamorous as it is discreet; months into the relationship you noticed its perfect usage for taboo practice. The earth tries to return to itself as paint peels from the walls.

He converges with the eerie silence. 

It is his discontinuation that turns you around. Otherwise, his hands fallow and large would be and in each press would be apologies you have heard in timeless befores. This time—out of all times—he just stares at you, head to toe, without one. Checking, like, to see if you're all there.

No. He is looking at you like you have done something wrong.

Scrunching up, you blurt. “What?” Quiet. Weak. But you regret your tone as it leaves your throat. The gestures blow your cover wide open.

He knows. “Somethin’ up?” And that is his cue to creep with inertia, his unwillingness to confront a potential problem, his face you cannot read. His alcohol kisses are disguises and his blows to your soul are the realest emotions he has stirred in you, post-beginning. Your nights begin with expectation.

He will either be enraged or lethargic.

But he stops crawling too close to the sun and reaches the rest with his hand, pinching the sleeve of the hoodie, rolling it together. His face shifts and unfortunately—you can read it.

Fuck.

He has his idea. “Where did you get this shit from?” You wish he drank himself to bed; his breath is hot, biting and in your senses and he does his part to fill each nerve. He has your arm, but he could very well have your heart, too. In his grasp. “No, better question—who did you get it from?” 

Cold sweat. You answer on high alert.

“Cat!”

He chews it up. “No.” Shakes his head, pins the sun closer in on itself. The counter pinches your lower-spine. “She doesn’t do weed no fuckin’ more. This smells of it. Who does it belong to, huh! One of mine?” 

Yelling is nothing compared to his gaping volume. 

Your eardrums wobble. “No,” refuting, you open yourself to him. Open to his open-ended judgement. He out-reprimands—until it clicks. “Are you sure it isn't just you?” 

He is just projecting.

Where did that come from?

Mateo fumes. His seams come apart. “Yeah, is it just me?” His rhetorical disturbs the somehow sound of nothing, but the hope that it would be yelling and nothing else—bangs against the cupboards. He holds your head in the side of it.

The impact disorients you from this kitchen.

You expect to meet a floor next.

As soon as the sharp pain leaves, it returns. He uses the lightheaded silence he created as a second reason to wrangle you a sweep over, aiming your head—or the whole, his anger is extensive—into the fridge. “Stupid bitch!” The door handle gets you in the stomach before he can.

It escapes your throat with a bubble of nothing to come out.

“Hope that solves your morning issue.” And it stops there. On the cold, slate tile. You have been here before.

Made swollen sounds.

You clutch for the floor. The floor that exists in your mind; too flat for any percievable grasp, your fingers find themselves in your palms, indenting. You press and tighten, searching for pain, but her sweatshirt is long and loved enough to protect those parts of your hands. 

You regret having a mouth.

Small room, big conniption. You feel a little too seen retrieving your tears through these wordless-oath, congested inhales. Being in here is suffocating. Outside was bigger; omnipresent, not so wall-to-wall, not so focused on your problems.

But you catch her scent. Not the thing he smelled. Her scent.

Unnostalgic.

Wearing a little bit of some-stranger-else does have a coalescing effect. Some chemical change. Rewiring.

Does she?

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[vermilionsun]

Okay, so we basically know very little/nothing, but I compiled everything I could find here :)

TW for religius themes [?]

Strap in

First of all, we know two definite Gods: the Allmother and Ocudeus.

The Allmother seems to be a benevolent deity that protects her believers. We can assume that since mr. Chocky was wishing upon her for mercy during the Soulless’ attack on the caravan and he was the only one not dying at that point (The Soulless kills him only after the MC’s curse has taken control of him).

Plus, the (Oracle! has the extra —[text]—) MC comments:

Is she the one who made the Soulless kill the traveller to save the MC? And cut their arms off to end their misery? Could she be protecting them?

Or did she not want her subject [the traveller] to suffer due to the MC's curse?

Was everything random and out of her control?

And that's basically everything we know about the Allmother.

Then we have Ocudeus. This ancient motherfucker— I had to rewind the damn game for this tentacle bitch again.

Anyway, we know he's the ancient, eldritch being Ais has formed a pact with" that gives him "borrowed, unnerving abilities."

Also, it is suspected that its name is likely from Latin oculus and deus ("eye" and "god") + that "Ocu" also means water in Betoi.

Now, onto the funny stuff: (Oracle!MC is the only one who comments on these)

The MC can hear a heartbeat the moment they step out of Kuras' clinic

And it gets louder the closer they get to the Seaspring

The MC can literally feel Ocudeus watching them from the Seaspring. What's interesting is that they find it familiar

Ais warns the MC about "ruining the host's mood" [Could be interpreted as: "I'm (Ais) nice, but you don't want to ruin the host's (Ocudeus, who propably lives in the waters of the Seaspring) mood (by asking questions regarding its power and questioning its dominance/control over me)] — As if Ocudeus itself invited them over; that would explain how that lady knew the MC's name:

Either Ocudeus wanted to see them or it wanted to be fed tea leaves by Ais and felt it was nescessary to brought someone over for Ais to clean the damn temple once in a whie—

IN REGARDS TO AIS' RELATIONSHIP WITH OCUDEUS

The MC's eyes always return to the mark, and only explanation left is that it was made by Ocudeus

WAIT. Pause and backtract to the Seaspring

Let's break them down:

1. The topmost

2. The closest one

3. The bottommost

"ucly dpzo vu h zovvapun zahy ol'z hsdhfz spzalupun." - Both with Affine [A=1, B=7] and Mono-alphabetic Substitution (+10 other cyphers) it's the same message: NEVER WISH ON A SHOOTING STAR HE'S ALWAYS LISTENING

Since the notes are left there by people who have evidently drank from the Seaspring (“If you see me, never speak to me,” etc) I will take a wild guess and assume the bottomest note is Ais’ last moments before Ocudeus merged with him.

And also this ties with the whole “Ocudeus is a fallen god” (“shooting/fallen star”) who left the Shroud ignorant about the world beyond and ended up landing to Eridia

"A river bisects Eridia into two distinct halves: the flood-eroded districts of Lowtown, and the elevated, gilded city of Hightown." — Eridia's a river city and Ocudeus is a giant fucking octopus.

ᵂʰᵃᵗ ᶜᵒᵘˡᵈ ᵖᵒˢˢᶦᵇˡʸ ᵍᵒ ʷʳᵒⁿᵍˀ :⁾⁾

What I find interesting though is that if the note is truly by Ais, he mentions mirrors and eyes. He must have been trying to hide from something—Ocudeus or another deity?—that “knew what he did,” and let Ocudeus overtake him as a last resort, perhaps.

BUT WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE MIRRORS?!?!?!

THERE IS NOT ONE (1) MIRROR IN THE WHOLE DEMO. NOR IN THE PROMOS. NOT ONE. [unless I'm blind]

Sure, it could be the surface of the water and the whole thing is metaphoricall but it bugs me so muchhhhh

kuras Kuras KURAS KURAS KURAS KURAS

Recently, it was revealed that he, indeed, came out of the Shroud THOUSANDS OF YEARS BEFORE THE FOGFALL OCCURED

And I bring you a background issue:

"An angel is a heavenly supernatural or spiritual being. In monotheistic belief-systems, such beings are under service of the supreme deity (i.e. God)."

Is he autonomous or does he worship a god? And if so, WHICH GOD?!

Perhaps, and take that with a grain of salt, perhaps Allmother

[Does anyone see a pattern? 'Cause I do]

What if Kuras' greatest sin was leaving the Shroud?

Kuras came through the Shroud because he loved humanity. He's had human friends, colleagues, and lovers...

Their incorporeal spirits take physical form, strengthening some and weakening others. The longer they spend in the human world, the better they adapt.

Kuras loved humanity so much he up and left the Shroud and gifted humans all the knowledge he possessed. He risked his power - perhaps his life - as he travelled through.

And so I ask you; Is that his biggest regret? Him loving humans to the extend of abandoning the Shroud and his creator for a life of teaching them, only for his efforts to result in "trinkets, pleasure, and petty tyranny"?

And lastly, Vere

I want you to keep an open mind with this

We know from his character lore that

"Centuries ago, the Senobium bound a wicked beast with a magic collar, sealing his powers and forcing his obedience."

and we know Vere has lived for over a century

BUT THE THING IS: ancient ≠ century [also mentioned here]

WHAT IF

"Seems we're both cursed"

What if Vere used to be human and attempted to take the ancient beast's power [remember, his fatal flaw: "Lusts for power, no matter the consequences"]

He obviously succeeded and became what he is now, while simultaniously getting chained for one reason or another;

The Senobium obviously sees him as a threat but uses him for his abilities anyways

Prehaps he couldn't control the power he gained?

He could have been a theif wanting a better life, like the Hound!MC

He could have been affiliated with the Senobium in another way before

But we know one thing for sure:

He, too, was betrayed and caused havoc unintentionally

Perhaps in regard to the beast's powers?

[jenfoundabug]

Red milkweed beetle (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus) Pennsylvania, US

The genus name means "four eyes" since the antennae actually bisect each eye (probably best seen in the second picture). As their common name implies, these beetles eat milkweed, and their bright colors warn that they contain toxins from their host plant.

[viewofagarden]

[Paraview AU] PVS-05 (Vee)

Suprised she's not a robot? (Well, aside from aesthetically?), yeah. But I was inspired to make her a ghost off of Sadako Yamamura and that one Rotom in the Old Chateau so...

Full Name: Vee [Last Name Unknown] ID #: PVS-05 Gender: Female (She/Her) Relatives: None Classification: Undead Species: Poltergeist Assigned Researcher: Veronica Hurley Preferred Food: None (Does not eat)

Discovery

PVS-05 was discovered by an anonymous individual who had encountered the entity. The individual had bought the TV that PVS-05 resides in from a yard sale and brought it home. On the night it had been brought home, the TV started playing green static on its own, despite having been turned off. The individual then heard an ominous voice saying “Look at Me” before the entity crawled out of the television, frightening the individual.

Thankfully, the individual was not harmed by PVS-05, as the subject seemingly only wanted the individual's attention. PVS-05 and the TV she resides in was then handed over to Paraview investigators after making a phone report to the Paraview Foundation. 

Upon questioning, the seller of the TV had no knowledge of its haunted status. 

Noted Behavior and Abilities

- PVS-05 appears to be a special kind of poltergeist, one that prefers to inhabit a specific object instead of a randomly selected one. Specifically preferring the old television she was found in. A couple instances and tests however, prove that PVS-05 is capable of possessing different objects, most notably, pieces of technology.

-PVS-05’s head is composed of a TV screen instead of a human head like most ghosts. Perhaps indicating the method that the subject previously passed away.

-Subject is not willing to divulge details about her past life, t is likely a sore subject for the entity. This may explain her lack of a surname, as she only gave her first name during the admission process. 

-PVS-05 is capable of exiting the television whenever she pleases. When inside the television, her appearance is corporeal, consists of different shades of green and black, and has legs, unlike the incorporeal form she takes when outside the TV, which is a pale green color from head to torso, as she lacks legs. Her legs instead being wires that look not dissimilar to human intestines. Due to the lack of legs, we suspect the subject's cause of death was blood loss from being bisected after a TV fell on her, the subject has neither confirmed or denied this theory.

-PVS-05 has described being inside the television as being in “a green void of static”, the “void” is changed into a different location by the subject’s influence.

-PVS-05 hosts game shows within the Auditorium, typically during weekdays at 7pm, with the shows lasting from 25 to 30 minutes. The game show is a trivia game which tests its contestants knowledge of various subjects, including but not limited to; English, Math, Art, Geography, Health, and various sciences like Astronomy, Paleontology, Botany, etc. There is reason to believe she was a game show host in her past life, but that has not been confirmed as of now.

- PVS-05 has displayed the ability to play different clips and soundbites from various television shows when inside the television screen. Subject appears to do this as a form of reacting to things.

- Any water-based subjects (Ex: PVS-29 (“Finn”)) must be at least 6 feet away from PVS-05’s TV to prevent short-circuiting. PVS-46 (“Zester”) also appears to cause the subject to short-circuit when at least 5 feet close to her. 

-PVS-05 does not require sleep or the consumption of food to survive. Subject is incapable of doing the latter, as any edible matter will phase through her when outside the TV. 

-PVS-05 has friendly relations with PVS-04 (“Shelly”), PVS-07 (“Qwerty”), PVS-38 (“Glisten”), and PVS-41 (“Stitch”). PVS-07 and PVS-05 have especially come to see each other like siblings despite not being biologically related. By contrast, the subject appears to have tension with PVS-01A (“Dandy”), PVS-26 (“Tisha”), and PVS-40 (“Scraps”). The third of which is due to PVS-40’s incredible luck during the subject’s game shows, the other two are currently for unknown reasons, as the subjects have refused to divulge the cause of their tense relations with PVS-05 or vice versa.

-PVS-05 glows green, regardless of form when in dark or dimly lit areas. If inside the television in a dimly lit area, the TV will glow green, in her incorporeal form her entire body blows.

[flowerprose]

Nine Lines, Nine People

tyvm for the tag, @sarahlizziewrites! it has probably been a full rotation around the sun since i last participated in a tag game, so thanks for the friendly welcome!

excerpt taken from eiros, a faerie portal fantasy in which the main character seeks to return to her homeland in order to preserve the last of her kind's dying botany. deals heavily with refugees and displacement, extinction and magic as a climate pollutant, monarchies and their dysfunction, and ofc lots of very rotten characters doing very rotten things to each other. some of my usual game paired with some very ambitious challenges.

The manor of Adrienne Van der Leif sat upon the end of a private gravel road, the grounds bisected by a hymning brook and embraced by a legion of coniferous trees, standing tall as titans, their branches bowed beneath snow in winter, ornamented by squirrel kits and flowering pinecones come spring. At dusk, the trees devoured the dwindling light, as if determined to shadow your path and entrap you in the arms of the forest forevermore. I had explored the fringe of this wood in countless adventures with the local children, until my unearthliness had warded them off like all monsters do. Aunt Adrienne had desired a cabin-style dwelling but settled for baroque at the behest of the Sanctuary’s council. European designs often reminded them of home: gilded facades and domed ceilings, brocaded silk upholstery and pastoral tapestries, dramatic windows with curved archways that invited passage, like the portals they had danced through in their youth centuries ago. We wanted our grandeur strangled in ivy and wisteria, marred by murmuring mushrooms and walls that pulsed from bee hives and bird's nests. A palace surrendered to the whims of nature: that was a faerie's home. Northern dwellings could only host blooms for a small window of spring and a splash of summer each year; then they were entrenched in a merciless clutch of snow and magic hibernated along with it, but not mine. Only I could make winter cower when it reached the threshold of the garden walls, leaving a moat of frost around the manor like a delicate membrane.

tagging some beloveds and new faces (but no pressure if tag games aren't your thing!): @bebewrites, @samplewriting, @ivorygrace, @theskeletonprior, @imbrisvastatio, @megarywrites, @lycaens, @narastories, and @transman-badass

[ebconsortium]

So, now that my profile is host to an Azrael blog, I thought it was appropriate to post my novelisation of Azrael #1 here. Consider it a test run for a possible novelisation of Fallen Angel, and of all 100 issues of the original 1995-2003 book.

Azrael #1

Fallen Angel: 1

Some Say In Fire…

In front of the boy stood a hellish creature, a satanic hellspawn, fangs bared and toxic bile leaking from his horribly-stained fangs, a claw’s pointer finger pointed straight into the boy’s direction. This is what he heard: “Give me your shoes.” For the boy, staring into the creature through the lenses of his Batsuit, the infernal flames around having consumed his world, he had only one answer to respond. “No… NO! The shoes are NOT yours! The shoes are MINE! YOU WILL NEVER GET THE SHOES! Fire all around him engulfed his whole field of vision, except, of course, for his opponent, his assailant. “Let the combat begin!” Was what the demon roared, and the boy in the devilish Red and Gold Batsuit shrieked. “I welcome it, Hell-spawned devilbat!” This devil unsheathed a golden sword from his belt’s sheath, and the resulting initial slice struck the Golden armoured chest of the boy’s Batsuit, yet it did next to no damage to his body. On the flip side, the boy landed an elbow in response and struck the devilbat in his right eye. The combat continued, clashing fists and claws, as the hellspawn attempted to tear a shred in the boy’s suit, and the boy responded with a swift kick to its gut. The demonic tones of the devilbat rang out across the enraging inferno. “A worthy counterattack! Would that I had time to trade blows with you till one of us falls apart like tissue paper in the rain!” “Or like pistachio ice cream in the toaster oven?” Smirking at the response, the demon continued the conversation. “Pistachio ice cream in the toaster oven! Oh good, most excellent good!” In the sweltering blaze, the boy’s surroundings were nonetheless perfectly visible, it had dropped from the massive Wayne mansion, and was now the expanse of the Batcave, and the boy was present in the spot bearing the massive penny, the giant artificial dinosaur, and everything in between, all framed against the infernal fires that threatened to annihilate him before the creature in front of him ever could. Nonetheless, the demonic assailant would not cease speaking to the boy. “But I cannot afford to dally. The business of wickedness and corruption summons me to far places! So it must come to pass that I am the salad chef and you are the carrot!” Its cape swished around and it swung its golden sword again down upon the boy’s face, intent to bisect him lengthwise. But his blade was caught by the boy’s armoured metal claws, which effortlessly gripped their clawed fingers around the sword’s sharpened edge. “Your food metaphor is foul.” The boy found his footing, swatted the sword away, released another kick into its Bat-symbol-laden chest, and ended with a little bit extra; he struck his right eye with his thumb and knocked him for a loop. “Stick to tissue paper.” The creature fell down flat on the ground, and the inferno began to recede from around them and the area. The boy’s sight turned hazy murky, and a fading black encompassed his vision. When the blackness had faded and the boy’s sight had been restored, it was perfectly clear where he actually was. And that is what he thinks he remembers.

The boy could see that he was once more standing in an alleyway somewhere in Gotham City, that dark, gothic, rain-drenched, wind-chilled, and crime-ridden city. The man who was lying unconscious on the ground in front of him was no satanic hellspawn, merely a common criminal, his matty hair curly and somewhat long, a face without facial hair, and an admittedly-nice black leather jacket. He certainly didn’t look as tough as he could have been, considering that his face was beaten and his body sprawled out cold on the ground. Midnight skies of deep black up broken up by wispy low clouds hung high over Gotham, white stars twinkling overhead even through the industrial smoke. Blood was spilled on the boy’s hand, as he opened it up and moved his fingers. They were pale, just like the rest of his skin, both from his own genetics and an extreme lack of sunlight over many previous years. The boy’s mind was reeling from the moment, how his world had erupted into a flame and then shifted back into the familiar Gotham cityscapes. His blonde hair moved about in the cool spring breeze, which still carried with it the New Jersey winter that had moved through Gotham and overstayed its welcome with the resulting spring. His circular glasses focused his vision on the darkness and sin of the city, something he, of course, had been very well acquainted with. Just then his thoughts were interrupted by the tired and strained voice of a man whom he had never properly met before, who was clearly both older and a fellow homeless resident of the Gotham slums. “That was certainly nice. Worthy of that Chinese fellow, Bruce Lee.” The boy simply asked him concerning what had happened, and the homeless man looked all around and answered: “You don’t remember? This fellow here asked you for your shoes; demanded them, actually. Your reaction was poetry in motion, rather violent poetry.” The crook, whom the boy had imagined as the demonic bat-spawn-creature from earlier, stirred, and found his rather unstable footing, staggering away back to the mouth of the alleyway and leaving them be for the moment. “You did exercise a modicum of restraint. He’ll live, he might even recover. Fortunate for him, probably unfortunate for society.” The two then began walking –somewhat aimlessly— through the Gotham streets.

Meanwhile, the same criminal the boy had injured was chilling at another spot with a few fellows, likewise common lawbreakers. “Yo man, what happened to ya?” “I was savagely attacked. All I done was, I ast a punk for his shoes and told him I was gonna cut his heart out an’ he done this to me!” The crook gestured to his wrecked right side of his face, showing off the severely-bruised eye and really the whole top right area of his face, purpleish and still reeling from the impact the boy had dealt to him. “Just cause you was gunna cut him?” “Yo man, that’s just cold, man.” The leather-jacketed crook shook his fist in the night air, the dry heat having cooled down by that point. “What we should do is, we should find him. Make him pay. Take his shoes.” The boy and the homeless drifter made their way downtown, on the sidewalks of Gotham’s dark, rancid underbelly. People of all kinds, bloods, skin colours, professions, and prerogatives were on these streets, though most of them had a single thing in common: close to all were extremely poor and completely down on their luck; From the soil-covered ragamuffins who roamed the trash-infested streets, to the elders whose lives ended up drunk and completely in the gutter. The buildings were painfully old and decrepit, withered and dusty, the electrical neon lighting semi-frequently cutting out, brightly-coloured graffiti defacing large numbers of the visible walls, which were themselves a veritable mix of aged brick and stale concrete, with rotting wood and chipped paint mixed in with all the dry and dusty air and the suffocating grey and black smoke spewing in from the city’s industrial areas and complexes. The homeless drifter squinted a little at the bright lights and decided to break the palpable silence. “While you were fighting, you mentioned pistachio ice cream and a toaster oven. Is that some sort of code?” The two came to a stop, and the man in the cap continued. “You know, like, a martial arts thing? Like those yells they do? You know, like: hai-yah! Pa-twah! Something like that?” The boy’s response was a simple “I don’t think so…”

Elsewhere, in a dimly-lit underground chamber built from gloomy stone bricks, sparsely lit with torches, candles, and lanterns scattered across various spots, a bloody occurrence was taking place. A man clothed in red from head to toe, his undersuit a blush red shade and his hood and robe both a bloody maroon with golden accents in various spots was poised ready for combat, holding his razor-sharp blade with meticulously-trained discipline, poised for anything his opponent would send his way. The man’s blue eyes pierced directly into the gaze of his opposition. “I am AZRAEL!” From above, two additional figures watched and conversed in the darkness. “I believe he is, Brother.” “Time will tell, Sister… Time and the will of Saint Dumas!” Down below, the man in Maroon exchanged just a few blows against his opponent, and, missing no windows or chances, pierced right through his enemy’s heart, using all the force he needed to drive his blade straight out of the body as cleanly as possible. The man overlooking the combatants rose from his chair, cloaked in a long ruby red mantle, the same kind of hood that most members of the order wore, and a long orange omophorion, emblazoned with several of the same symbol —a melding of a western cross and a modified fleur-de-lis— that denoted his position which placed him in charge of the beasts. On his shoulder rested a live monkey that followed him everywhere, and at his feet rested a live serpent whose fangs could penetrate even the thickest animal skin.

He simply pointed, and immediately arose a pair of massive hostile animals, bearing appearances similar to multiple different kinds of wild predators, both drooling with anticipation at the possibility of a fresh meal. The Brother in ruby gave the command: “Feast, my little ones.” With blazing swiftness the animals sprung onto the corpse of the dead combatant, while the one in Maroon and Blush Red stepped out of the way of the bloody carnage and raised his blade to signal the end of the combat. The man overlooking him looked down to him and nodded, dismissing him. Next to the man on the overlook, the woman who had been standing next to him spoke again. “Yes, I believe he shall serve as the sacred order of Saint Dumas as the new Azrael quite nicely.” “Saint Dumas be praised. I doubt it. Azrael needs to be trained from birth. If you want my opinion, I can only believe that no ordinary man, no matter how skilled, can execute the avenging angel Azrael’s sacred duties. And, Sister Lilhy, there is another problem. We are not certain the true Azrael is dead.” The woman, who wore similar attire, but with a larger hood, a longer and looser robe that trailed behind her, with golden embroidery on the ends of the sleeves, a longer scarf-esque Cadmium Red shoulder vestment that was wider with its scarf-like dimensions, that also bore mosaic-like golden embroidery to go along with the gold trimming on the outside edges, and a darker, more Burgundy Red, stepped down the staircase to the Brother’s pets, and began to pet them, rustling their fur, scratching the insides of their ears, giving them a set of well-targeted ministries, and received a series of satisfied guttural growls in response. “He vanished in that American city… Gotham, is it? He abandoned his mantle and disregarded his duties, and he disappeared completely back in August two whole years ago. We have found nothing of him and heard nothing of what he could have been up to, no matter how hard we have tried. It is my belief that it is safe for us to presume that Jean-Paul Valley is either dead, or that he soon will be. Come, Brother Zoo, let us not be late for the evening devotion services. Worry not about Jean-Paul Valley or Gotham City.” With that, the two devotees made their way out of the chamber, and into the darkness.

Over in Gotham City, Brian Bryan had returned to his preferred residence, a patch of uninhabited alleyway close to a set of overhead railroad lines. Brian grabbed a few more wooden planks to add to his literal trash fire, a decent blaze erupting from a discarded oil barrel. He took another look around at his section of the slums: the discarded boxes, packages, wrappers, bags, food, technology, and such, in addition to his prize oblong cardboard box, with piles of outdated newspapers and trashed paper sheets tying the whole area together. Only one term properly described this habitat. “Ah, home sweet home.” But the peace of home did not last, for the same criminals the boy had earlier beaten up had now made their presence at his dwelling, seemingly having come hee for him. the one with the beaten left eye stepped a little closer. “Yo, lemme hold your bottle one time.” Brian clutched the two-thirds-full wine bottle he had been holding close to his open jacket as best he could and tried his best to fire back. “I highly doubt that you could ever be connoisseur enough to appreciate such a fine vintage as this, friend. It is an excellent tokay that is at least four months old. Matter of fact I have it on the best authority that the vintner used only the finest grapes found in the bargain bins of the local corner store and hung them from the rack above the alcohol from which it was issued for upwards of one full minute. I would suggest that you seek something more suitable to the common palette.” The reply to that statement was rather simple: “I said gimme the bottle!” A punch knocked Brian onto his box, and all he said to reply was “I cannot refuse such an earnest and polite request! Drink in good health, friend!” The criminal in the leather jacket opened the bottle and took a swig. “That’s what me an’ my mates are gonna do. An’ you’re gonna tell us where the punk is.” “Punk?” “The one that stomped me. An’ after you’re done talkin’ we’re gonna take your shoes.” The leather-jacketed punk took another swig from the bottle, and at the same time spotted Brian attempting to crawl away for help. He directed one of his cohorts to stop him, and so he did. The jacketed criminal pulled out a switchblade and approached. “Ya shouldn’ta run, ol’ man. Now I gotta slice an’ dice.”

But before he could move any closer, another hand clamped down around his wrist with a steel-hard grip. One of the criminals recognised him from earlier. “It’s him! The punk!” The boy was cloaked in shadows almost completely, save his circular glasses, which shone a dark orange. Did they mean him? Is that another one of his names? Punk? Once Brian had gotten up, he grabbed the boy’s coat and pleaded. “Come on, Azrael, or whatever your name is!” Azrael. The word sucked at his mind, took it down into some dark emptiness, and the world, his world, erupts into flames. Taking down the criminal lot in front of him was no trouble, just a few palms, kicks, and throws. When the one who had punched Brian threw his switchblade in the boy’s direction, he effortlessly caught the handle and snapped the blade in twain. The assailant saw we—after a few seconds of paralysis with shock— wisely fled and all Brian could say was “Good heavens…!” He lightly placed a hand upon the boy’s shoulder and asked “Are you all right?” Flames danced in the boy’s eyes, and he responded “Where are the flames…?” “There are no flames. Except for my fireplace, Is that what you mean?” “No, there was a wall of fire all around…” The two continued talking while walking back to the shelter. “I’m afraid you were legitimately seeing things that weren't there. Hallucinating, would be the term.” “I think I probably was. I do that quite a lot.” Coming back into the city lights, the boy’s eyes were once more visible, while Brian was glancing at the flow of moving vehicles. “Hallucinating or not, I would call that rather magnificent. Considering the way you dealt with those assailants, I almost actually believe you are Batman.” The boy adjusted his hair and parted his bangs to his left side like he preferred. The two stopped in front of an iron streetlight, and the boy pushed his glasses up. “But I’m not. Not anymore. Batman lives… He lives many miles from here.”

The place that Jean-Paul Valley had referred to was a property on a hilltop overlooking Gotham City, a Three-floor, Thirty-Two-Million-dollar Gothic revival mansion by the name of Wayne Manor. The most prominent resident of this abode was Bruce Wayne, one of the wealthiest men to ever grace the American business circuit. The grounds were maintained with meticulous precision and cleanliness, the white oak trees provided the premises with much-needed twenty-four-hour shelter from the occasional sunlight, as well as extra flair to the Waynes’ family residence. Though, of course, only Two Waynes currently occupied the mansion, and neither spent their nights there. No, in fact, One of them, named Bruce Wayne was, at this very moment, turning the hands on the old family grandfather clock to a very special time: That being 10:47, the time that Thomas and Martha Wayne —his own parents— were shot and killed in an indiscriminate act of violence and robbery. 10:47 was the time; Bruce never forgot the fact that Martha Wayne’s wristwatch had stopped on that time the moment her body had hit the dirty ground of Crime Alley and rendered the wristwatch nonfunctional, just like the Waynes’ corpses. Once the hands of the clock were turned, the clock swung open, revealing a hidden passageway that led down to a sprawling underground cave system, a space of shadows and cold, dark, stone, illuminated only by sparse electric light of the equipment and a few lamps of white light. Before he went down there, though, Bruce decided to check in on his most loyal employee and make sure he hadn’t forgotten something. Alfred Pennyworth, the trusted butler, knew full well that the man he worked for was Bruce Wayne by day and Batman by night. Alfred was, at that moment, sanitising the black oak dining room table that seated twenty people. “Alfred, any last-minute happenings that need my attention up here?” Alfred smiled a little and replied in his usual refined tone, not missing a beat of his work. “No, master Bruce, your schedule for the next few days should be completely free.” Bruce had frequently made attempts to raise the butler’s payment, but Alfred had rejected pay raises every time, telling him that he felt that would be too much for what he did, and that Bruce “should be saving that money for funerals, considering both my age advantage, and your hobbies in both daytime and nighttime.” Bruce thanked Alfred for the update, and left him to his work.

Once Bruce Wayne had stepped into the passageway, closed the clock behind him and made his way down the stone stairs to the cave below, he quickly removed the business clothing he had been previously wearing, and changed his apparel into that of his other identity, the identity that he had built for himself ever since he had begun his mission to fight against crime and clean up his home city: in this apparel, he was the Batman. He slipped his pure black cape and cowl on to complete the suit. Other things that made up Bruce Wayne’s batsuit consisted of a grey bodysuit, with his black bat-symbol emblazoned in the top center of the chest, which worked as a subtle target to draw in gunfire away from his exposed mouth and eyes, a golden-coloured utility belt which contained such tools as several grappling lines, computer storage drives, capsules filled with knockout gases, a few stacks of his trademark metal throwing batarangs, tracking devices that he could stick to mostly anything, GPS systems to follow what he was tracking, and even spare woven kevlar that he could use to patch up his flexible black cape if it was ever ripped while out in the field. He wore that mantle of the Batman and he wore it with cautious pride. Only recently had he taken it back, and he was determined to prove —if only to himself— that his way still worked, that his way was the best way to rid Gotham of crime, no matter how much he needed to keep at it, constantly in the grind, in and out, day in and day out. But it was his duty, and he was determined to see it through.

Waiting for him was his other assistant, fellow crime-fighter, and his own son, whom he had not known about for twelve whole years of his life. This child’s name was Damian Wayne, but in this cave, his costumed identity carried the name Robin. Red, Yellow, and Green were the colours of his suit, with splashes of Black thrown in on his cape and his domino mask to tie it together. He was a small and bright spot, contrasting the tall height and darkness of the Grey and Black Batman. “So, Batman, going somewhere two can go?” Batman picked up a Brown paper package tied up with White strings and headed towards his professional vehicle, the Batmobile. The Batmobile was Batman’s personal transportation, a heavily-modified Chevy Impala crossed with various muscle cars and enhanced with a litany of up-grades and security, which included such amenities as being built slimmer than regular cars to fit into alleyways, heavy-duty tires manufactured to the same protection as presidential motorcades, maybe even better, heavy-duty steel armour on the outside to take whatever beatings and collisions the terrain could offer, special tinting on the windshield’s glass to ensure Batman and any potential companions would not be seen from the outside looking in, extremely loud car alarms that could be heard from miles away, heavy-duty weaponry to deal with potential obstacles on the road, head-and-taillights that could light up the entire way ahead for up to 600 feet, and such. Batman hopped into the Black leather driver’s seat and gave his response to his child. “I can handle this venture on my own, don’t need to take you off your usual patrol.” Robin sat on a few nearby rocks and seemed a little suspicious. “Am I allowed to ask what’s the occasion?” Batman ignited the car’s engines and replied: “I’ve got a very large skeleton in the proverbial closet. I need to correct an injustice.” “You mean Jean-Paul Valley.” “I do.” Robin sounded genuinely hurt when he retorted “Maybe it isn’t my place to say anything, but you were on the receiving end of all the hell that Jean-Paul Valley put you through. You made him Batman. The Batman, and how did he uphold your legacy? He dragged your name through the gutter, tried to kill me and you, changed the Batsuit to an unrecogniseable metal thing, used a gun on his left arm and a flamethrower on his right, blew up the old Batmobile when you tried to follow him home with it, broke bones, fractured skulls, hell, don’t you remember when he let that Abattoir person die, and his innocent cousin along with him?!” A small silence came over the cave, and Batman broke it when he looked back at his sidekick. “When I made him Batman, I failed to consider what it would do to him. And when I took the title back, I just abandoned him, cut him off and didn’t care one bit for helping him. And now I bet you he’s still here in the Gotham slums, fried out of his mind and destitute, despondent. What he did, what he became, is my responsibility. It’s a matter of morals and conscience. I’ve done an injustice, and I need to make it right. Perhaps it’s too late to actually help him, but I need to try. I should be back before dawn.” With that, Batman took off in the Batmobile towards Gotham’s downtown.

Meanwhile, in the Gotham slums, the same lot that Jean-Paul Valley had earlier beaten earlier that night were chilling on a sidewalk by the brick buildings near the homeless shelter. “Wasn’t right what he done to us.” “Wasn’t none of his business." “Yeah, we was talkin to the old man.” “We gonna do anything about it?” “Well… maybe sometime later.” “Yeah, I’m really busy tonight.” “I don’t mean fight ‘im. He’d only cheat again.” “That’s what he does. He cheats.” “Then what, If we don’t fight ‘im?” The mulleted criminal spoke again: “I seen him down at the shelter, he prob’ly lives there. He’s probably asleep by now.” He kicked around an old can of coke and crushed it with his foot as he thought. “I say we give him a hot foot, clear up to the top of his head.” At the shelter, Brian Bryan and Jean-Paul Valley made it inside, creaking the door open and stepping into the dingy and dusty dwelling, greeting the resident Orthodox Priest as he was cleaning his shoes. Jean-Paul sat down with Brian at a wooden table, Brian fetching a paper cup of pure Black coffee. “From what you told me of your childhood, I would say that your hallucinations are almost to be expected. Considering all that hellfire preaching that you’ve been exposed to in your sleep, of course you’d be obsessed with flames. It’s been Ten years since I practiced psychiatry, but I have a bit of advice for your help if you’re interested. When you see something that shouldn’t be there, something your common sense tells you is out of the ordinary, try to ignore it. Could you do that?” “I will, I’ll try to ignore it.”, Was the response of a dazed and wasted Jean-Paul. Brian took a swig of the coffee he had, swallowing it with a bitter expression, clearly sour.

“Chuh; almost as bad as the stuff I was drinking earlier.” Brian got up to leave, and Jean-Paul uttered a weary “Er… Thank you.” “I should thank you, for the best evening I’ve had in years. Perhaps I’ll see you again.” He tipped his cap to the priest as he left, and the priest turned over to Jean-Paul, who was limbering his way up the stairwell. “Calling it a day, Jean-Paul? Don’t forget your prayers.” Jean-Paul looked back and nodded. “Have a good night, Father Mark.” Jean-Paul made his way to the beds on the second floor, sitting up straight in one of the available mattresses, deep in thought. Back downstairs, another knock came to the door, which the priest answered. “I’m sorry fellows, but there aren’t any more beds available tonight. If you want, you can come back for breakfast at seven.” The lot just whacked him down with a board and made their way inside, petroleum cans and tinderbox in hand. “Let’s do it.” “Yeh.” “This’ll be good.” “Real good.” “All set.” The mulleted criminal with the Black eye took his tinderbox and lit a match. “Give ‘im a hotfoot clear up to the top of his head.” He threw his match down onto the puddles of petrol, and the building went instantly ablaze. “Let’s get outta here.” “C’mon, man.” “Wait a minnit. That priest, he’s got new shoes, shiny new shoes.” The mulleted criminal lingered a bit longer to untie and remove the unconscious priest’s shoes, and then left him there to burn as he ran out with his cohorts. Upstairs, the flames had spread very hastily, and most everyone who had been sleeping was up and away. “Crib’s on fire!” “Run for it!” “Outta here!” “Gotta flee!” But in this chaotic mess, one resident, only one, remained sitting exactly where he was. Jean-Paul Valley’s glasses reflected the females that surrounded his bed, and he remained resolute, unmoving. He only uttered one thing. “When you see something that shouldn’t be there, ignore it.”

In Times To Come:

Azrael engages in battle,

Brian loses a bottle,

and there’s a big hole

in the ground.

[ar-ghilas-vir-banal]

A short that I had to write else I’d go mad.

Jagged blades of ice tore up through the ground, impaling the Venatori soldiers before they could reach the little knot of Inquisition forces.

They’d come on them in the night, startling the entire camp out of their tents and straight into battle.

Solas slammed the end of his staff into the ground with a sharp grunt. They’d been fighting for half an hour solid. His arms and back were starting to quiver with the relentless pace, but he simply refused to stop.

He cast a glance behind, looking for her. She was nearing exhaustion too, she must have been. Her preferred flames rippled out ahead of her in a crescent, setting alight three Venatori who’d just materialized from the trees.

The light from her fire was almost too bright, a staggering, weaving flare that made Solas look away suddenly.

Another rushed him. Then another.

Where were they coming from?

Solas had not travelled with the group since the night in Crestwood, which he understood. He also understood why he’d been brought this time. The battle needed his strength.

No.

The Inquisitor chose him because she needed him.

A gash of guilt opened in his heart, even as he caught the downward stroke on his staff, heaved his shoulder into the Venatori woman’s chest, and then sent a Fade shard into her, allowing his frustration with himself out with a snarl.

He knew she needed him. Solas knew… he knew how badly the weight of the Inquisition weighed on her. He knew how terrified of becoming a Chantry puppet she was. How exhausted she was… how she came to him for relief. How he’d robbed her of what little respite that was.

He’d heard her talk to Dorian and then break into the most gut wrenching sobs Solas could ever remember, heard the wound on her he’d left. He’d seen that she was paler now, thinner, and that her eyes were sunken and nearly bruised all the time. She wasn’t sleeping. She was barely eating.

Solas had done this.

He’d told her that he’d distracted her from her duty, trying as he might to find something to make what he had done that night make sense. But it didn’t. This was… all wrong. Cruel. Heartless. Soulless.

A flash of red lightning split the air between them and they both turned to see its source. A fresh wave of Venatori surged out from behind a cluster of boulders. Two mages stood behind them, slinging lightning and fire in great, deadly arcs over the foot soldiers who swarmed toward the Inquisition camp.

Solas twisted his staff, whirling it over his head, and slammed it down, sending four ice spikes straight into the face of one. Their head snapped back hard, nearly leaving their body. They went down.

A gout of fire singed the tip of his ear as the Inquisitor answered his shot; Solas watched the ball of flame bisect the mage’s tome and then their body; they immediately collapsed in a writhing, shrieking heap. He almost grinned. In their weeks at a distance, they’d barely spoken. This was the closest they’d been in proximity. She had been practicing; her skill was still growing, changing… despite everything, despite a silent admittance that he had no right whatsoever to be, Solas was proud of her.

But then he stopped dwelling on her and saw with dread that the mages had bought the soldiers enough time to reach them.

The Bull waded in, great axe swinging, but even though he could take two down with one cleave, there were simply too many. Dorian followed, his sleep shirt ripped open and bloody where a blade had grazed his ribs. The man looked terrified, fighting like a wild animal, lightning and ice whirling about him in a miniature blizzard.

They couldn’t keep this up. If there were more…

Solas felt his back thump into someone else’s. He didn’t have to look to know who it was.

“We must throw up a barrier. We cannot withstand such a host! Clear them out, control their numbers or we are lost!”

“Do it,” she snapped, “and watch for our people!” The Inquisitor twirled her staff end over end, and then drove it into the dirt. Solas mirrored her, their movements in near perfect synchronization. With a roar, the besieged camp was suddenly wreathed in flames two men high, light and heat searing the night as if a small sun had been born upon the very ground.

Panicked, agonized screams sang out from all around him. The Inquisition forces, used to this tactic, turned back to work on the threat still within the circle, and Solas was relieved to see that somehow, none had fallen, if his brief headcount was accurate. Solas braced himself, feeling sweat trickle down his temple as he and the Inquisitor were rushed, blades flashing red-orange in the firelight as the Venatori worked to bring the two mages down.

One went for Solas’ face but they were sent flying by a bolt of violet lightning. He turned, seeing a soldier about to drop on top of the Inquisitor from the boulders above them, and Solas froze him solid to the spot.

Rage filled him to the point that he saw red. He couldn’t help it. The thought of her dying in a camp if he hadn’t been there was enough to make him sick. She’d fight to the last, she’d die a hero. And he’d be left knowing he left her unguarded… uncherished.

What a fool he was.

But… he was with her. And she was protecting him. Just as she’d said she would. A promise she’d never faltered in keeping. While he’d delivered her nothing but heartache. The rage faltered, melting into despair. Despair and a sudden tenderness that made him want to drop his staff, turn to her and pull her to him.

He couldn’t. It would leave her back defenseless. But he did turn to glance at her. Just for a moment. When she wouldn’t see him. When she would be too occupied to perceive the sadness on his face, the longing; Solas knew how unguarded his expressions were around her.

She was so lovely. A sheen of sweat on her face. Eyes bright and large. Hair whirling about her now bare face. Solas wanted to kiss her. Fall at her knees and bow. Worship this creature that he’d never been worthy to touch, much less be loved by. He wanted to beg her to forgive him, admit his idiocy. She could kill him now, if she wanted. Take her heartbroken vengeance. But his Vhenan was no monster. She wasn’t selfish or possessive… no.

That was Solas.

Her face turned up to him. It took Solas’ breath, meeting her eyes. Even in the heat of battle, with fear and fury painted about them, the way she looked at him was nothing but soft. Soft and sad.

He could compare her face from Crestwood to now easily, this close. So close he could feel her breath. The purple shadows under her eyes were so very deep. The inward slant of cheekbones, too sharp… had she been crying before? Her eyes were red. A bit swollen.

More of his work.

He angled himself toward her, apologies and entreaties on his tongue. He would beg. He would beg and plead and confess. Whatever it took. He couldn’t live like this. Knowing what he’d done. Somehow, amongst all the death, the betrayal, and the failure, this was simply too much.

The Inquisitor stepped nearly right into his arms and drove the end of her staff through the eye of a soldier that Solas had completely ignored.

They watched the man fall with a gurgle together and then back to each other.

“Stop focusing on me!” she snarled at the exact same time that he did, startling himself with the ferocity in his own voice. She didn’t listen, ducking under a shield swipe and then hurling the soldier backward to the sound of snapping bone. “Watch your own- Solas!”

Solas brought his staff up and with it, ice. But he was too late. He knew the moment he moved that he was too late. It felt like felt like teeth, but large and so terribly cold as the blade sank into his stomach. He felt it plunge past muscle and sinew, through his lung, and then in a breathtaking burst of searing, white hot pain, break through the other side of him. Then another. And another, each strike harder and faster than the last. He stumbled forward, shoving his staff out. The two Venatori simply disintegrated, Fade-called shards riddling them until there was nought but a mist and shards of bone left. Solas swayed on his feet, trying to bring his staff up… but it was so heavy.

She caught him, one arm coming around him and then heat bloomed fierce and strong behind him. Solas didn’t look. He knew. Of course he knew. It was only fitting; he’d broken the heart of his dearest love, he’d hurt his Vhenan. What else befitted something like him? Death alone was his recompense… and he would accept it.

It was only right.

Her arms bore his weight a moment and then he was being lowered to the solid ground, the sounds of fighting present but falling away. In a stroke of final mercy, Solas realized he could hear her. Her breath. Her voice. Even her heartbeat. It was wild, hammering. Broken. He did that.

Then he saw her, his Inquisitor, Vhenan above him, and he could feel hand fumble around desperately for a moment until it found its home within both of hers. That was… good. So terribly good. She kissed his knuckles and he wanted to smile. It was like a cool cloth to a fevered brow; the end to an illness that he’d inflicted upon himself. And for what? To spend his last days in abject misery? So many regrets… But her lips were soft, if not a little chapped. He’d dreamed of nothing but kissing them since Crestwood. And now they kissed him. A marvel… a miracle.

“You c-cannot-“

“Don’t speak. D… I’m trying trying…”

He blinked, slowly. This back and chest burned, ice and fire and red. He could feel his lungs filling up, though her magic pressed against it. She was holding it off as best she could. But Solas knew, as he supposed all creatures knew, that he did not have long now. There were words he needed to say. Apologies at the very least. Declarations if he could manage them.

She sobbed; defeat pulled her down to rest her forehead on his chest and Solas was sure his heart would break, hearing such things come from her. From his hope? She was indomitable, stronger than he could ever be. Better. It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be for him. Let her spend her tears for someone like Dorian who’d never abandoned her, even when time hurled them into the abyss or the Fade swallowed her. Or someone like the General; he was upstanding, true, constant.

Not for a betrayer. A liar. A monster.

“Vhenan- I’m s-so sorry,” he said in a shockingly clear voice, trying to lift his head so he could see her. But he was so heavy. This body he never wanted, this body that had wanted her, tried… but then he had to fall back and try to keep his eyes open.

She leaned over him, and touched his face, urging him to lie still. Solas’ eyes rolled back in his head at her touch; why had he refused this? Why had he allowed panic to change his mind? Why had he not simply surrendered… it would have been well. He knew that now with startling clarity. She would have been a bit afraid. Cautious. Both very understandable… but she would have still drawn him to her in the end, and loved him. Loved all of him. The Wolf and the man.

“I am… such a fool,” he croaked, shaking his head. “I should have…” Solas paused, coughing up the hot, choking stuff that was suddenly too much to speak around. “Mm… Sh… should’ve loved you. I should have-”

The Inquisitor vanished. There was only the petite Dalish woman with kind eyes and an even kinder voice now. The one with the Veil in her hand. The one who’d begged him to tell her she was just a dalliance. That she’d been nothing.

Those were of the few lies Solas had refused to tell. She kissed his forehead; Solas tilted his chin up, brazen with haste, with regret, asking for something she shouldn’t… but she did give it to him regardless.

The kiss was softer than snowfall, but like the touch of her hand, it was oh so very good.

“Ar lath ma, Vhenan,” he whispered, needing to cough again. His body was too weak to manage it. It was drowning him, he could feel it pouring over his neck and chest. It was on her mouth. But she’d never been so lovely as she was now, illuminated by a clarity of mind and spirit that Solas hadn’t experienced since the first days as an elf.

What time he’d wasted…

Solas hoped she knew… but how could she? He’d been so tight-lipped, rationing every touch, every word to her when they had been courting that when Solas did touch her, he could see the shock on her face. He’d starved her, made her endure self denial in favor of his own “considerations.” When there had been no considerations to begin with. He’d wanted what she’d wanted. It could’ve been… so easy…

“Vh- Vhenan, ir abelas… Ar lath ma,” he hurried, feeling cold and dark pull him down. Away. She had to know. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He didn’t regret a second with her, if only in that Solas now wished he’d given in.

“Ar lath ma, bellanaris.”

Tears came to his eyes. She was so beautiful. Within and without. So pure, pristine as the driven snow against his black, blighted heart. How could he have done this to her? How could he have even begun, have allowed himself to turn them down this path?

“I… l-loved you f…” Solas’ teeth chattered as he tried to speak, so sudden was the chill in his bones that he was almost shocked by it. “From the m-m-moment I met you. You are… *ma sa lath*… *ma vhenan sulahn*… I should have never left you.”

She held him, cradling him against her as she rocked and wept. Her hands were so warm on his skin that the shivering ceased, calming as if he was sinking into a warm bath. Her scent filled him, cool and clean. Sweat and leathers, tears, yes… but beyond that, wind and trees. A quiet scent. She smelled like… like the place in the Fade he’d abided within, when the world was younger and he was simpler. Happy. How had he never noticed before? Why had he not taken the time? Was he, the Dread Wolf, so easily frightened?

Solas smirked, eyes nearly closing. Of course he was.

“Then stay now. Stay with me.”

Oh, she was so sweet. So very sweet.

“M-marry me,” he replied, nestling his brow on her cheek. He was becoming very tired. He could sleep there. Her arms had given him the best rest of his long life just a few weeks ago… and he’d been stupid enough to stop it.

He’d thought of marriage before. A fleeting little whisper that passed through his mind from time to time. It was nearly an impossibility for him to even fathom. Sharing not a castle, but a home with her. Somewhere near a stream, perhaps with a garden? A few chickens. Goats perhaps. Or halla.

And then following that, Solas had dreamed of children. Once, they’d been alien to him. Creatures born, not made. That grew and laughed and played and learned. What would their children have looked like? Her eyes, surely. And her hair… miniatures of her, naturally. Creatures fashioned of her, carried within her, birthed by her would be beautiful, inextricably precious little hearts.

Nothing like himself.

“I will,” she breathed, but the words may as well have been a shout. It was stupid, to feel this much joy as one lay dying. But it was there. She’d have married him. She’d have lived with him. She’d have bore their children, in time. It was as if Solas saw in an instant the future that he’d strangled with his own two hands. As surely as if he’d killed them all.

He felt her kiss him again, between his eyes, even as tears fell down his temples and cheeks. Her hand traced his brow. His nose. His own mouth. She dabbed away the blood on his lips, on her own, and kissed him properly, again. How well she’d loved him. How gently, with all the tenderness of spring’s first bloom. Solas hadn’t returned this love properly, even as he’d recognized it for what it was: a miracle. How could he have been so idiotic? To spurn this? Regret rose up inside him, stealing what breath he had left.

But something squashed it, brushing it aside. “I will find you,” she was saying. “Remember me. In the Fade. I will find you.”

Solas opened his eyes, touching immediately on hers despite how hard it was to see. He would. He would find her. There would be no secrets, no plans… nothing. Just them. The love he felt for her was strong. He would find her.

Solas nodded. He couldn’t speak anymore. But he would swear every oath in every tongue on any god that he would find her.

“Banal nadas, ar lath ma… Vhenan.” She pressed their foreheads together, holding him safe and warm next to her heart.

Solas smiled. Her lips pressed to his own, one final time. All he possessed strength for was a gentle rock of his brow into hers. She returned it, and then kissed him again, another final time.

It was… marvellous. Solas had long felt that being kissed by her was like dying. Being torn open and yet without pain, being hollowed out, but filled with a stunning, stolen bliss. That he could die and be content if that was the last thing he felt.

And so, he did.

[nekrospompos]

@lanctiflora || Tainted Offering, Hollow Prayer. (Starter)

After your heart stops, your brain can persist for up to ten minutes. Normal men are granted the crooning mercy of a waiting room, the soft hushed welcome that blankets fear into nothingness before their body expires. For a cultivator, excess qi can be supplemented for oxygen, allowing a man to experience vividly the coming death that licks his nerves numb. Countless li away from the oceanside kingdom of Yunmeng lies their former second prince, eyes bloodshot and glossing by the second. Someone yanks out the blade that has bisected his heart and drags Wei Wuxian by the hair. He would come to regret not glancing over and seeing who exactly had slighted him, so he might haunt them as a vengeful ghost, but It’d been such a tiring year. Even his fearsome eyes can't bear to roll an inch more, stuck to a spot on the sky where light cracks from between soft clouds. He is waiting for a storm that does not come. Wei Wuxian dies under a clear and sunny sky.

────────────

Not everything that lurked within Binan Suo was dead, despite its rumor-given title of a ghost mound. Gui, yao, guai and mo. All combinations of orders gave uninformed labels to the men who shoved each colorful and sharp-toothed thing into some few boxes, missing completely the marvel of harmony they’d all managed to achieve. Refuge was once an old pit, say the beasts that crawled through Xinjiang border’s rich soil. Something had cleaved through the old city in its prime, rumors changed the culprit from calamity to god, all agreeing that the earth mixed with rubble and mercury so thoroughly that the land and its devastation became one. Like worms, the resentment-thick ruin became a paradise to all evil that hid in the gaps of air below stained earth, barging into beds and half torn kitchens that caused daily uproar over territory disputes. If they were grander things, larger and sharper, then the ambitious maggots might do as their nature asked but already there were too few shelters for the vulgar and filthy.

A century ago, Mount Tonglu shivers. From its cinnabar womb is born a man masked in simple bronze, delicate hands clean and pure, swathed in robes of ash. With no survivors, gossip relies on the minor ghosts who dared not enter too far. They speak of a horrible song with a melody so enchanting that the mountains themselves had been charmed, that the newest calamity did not play or hum a tune in his exit, that the lingering melody was the last obsessions of each spirit he had slain, too enchanted to recall anything else as their fires flickered and died. The soul twisting maestro of ash, hisses the wisest of cowards, a foul brute who domineered any opposing ghost, bending their unwilling bodies to break until they were broken themselves. He did not have to lift a finger.

A century ago, the Xinjiang Ruins found themselves hosting a man who introduced himself as Lian Ren. A decade later, a city blooms from sickly roots, bright and busy.

────────────

“You hear that crap ‘bout elders not showing respect to the kids at these things? The livin’ folk would just leave my kid’s body there! Too good to bring home their own sons!”

A child’s funeral is hardly a point for celebration, but each death within Binan Suo’s gates could be a point of jealousy. If there was one thing the town’s keeper excelled at, it was opulent rituals, laughing with a loose grip on fluttering joss papers that they have the coffers to spare. Today’s celebration is that a full week can be properly devoted to mourning and celebration; A short life is still a life lived, thus one worth honoring. The old ghost is given enough warmed liquor to forget about crying and every festive stranger intends to keep it that way.

“Yeah! And make sure not to dress ‘em in red! Wouldn’t want the little guy coming back as a ghost! HAH!”

Wine spills heavily at every opportunity, already dirtying the robes of the father, red-eyed and making a point to speak his humor towards his son. A small ghoul, the pair had arrived only a week ago with the son cold and muttering of a chasing wisp only he could see. “He’s beautiful,” the boy had murmured, “he’s telling me of his daughters.” The boy said very little after that and his body grew weaker and weaker until one sunrise revealed a cold body, as if his soul and flesh were cut. Most could sympathize with such a tragedy, pulling the father into a crowd as thick in cackles as it was in broken cups.

The master of Refuge is masked and clothed in black, lounging against a tree trunk a li from his city. He lowers his arm enough that the accompanying slender-necked ghost can refill the bronze zhi held carelessly between calloused fingers.

Wei Wuxian had no need to learn of each wedding or funeral but the manner of the boy’s death did not come to his attention until a coffin was commissioned, sending him on a private hunt, tugged along by intrigue and a strange guilt that his warding talismans did not hinder the unwelcome entry. Thinking it might be a variant of a reverend of empty words, Wuxian repaints the alarm seals by Wu time, grabs an assistant, gives his personal condolences, and leaves for the forest by Shen time. Dressed in light grey robes, he hums softly, beckoning the forest's spirits to color and rise.

"My condolences for interrupting your rest, I have to ask, does this story seem familiar? A man rides through the forest with his son, who begins to tell of a chasing wisp..."

[queerpgs]

Friday 6th September - CAIN

Good evening my crepuscular cavaliers! We have a new GM, Alice, making her QueeRPGs debut this coming Friday with CAIN.

For those of you who haven't heard of it, CAIN is a new RPG by Tom Bloom, creator of the RPGs Lancer and Goblin with a Fat Ass as well as author and illustrator of the web-comic Kill Six Billion Demons.

Mission Log: Operation Weeping Mountain Location: Rowbury, pop. 64 2012.01.13 09:43 - A man is found dead with limbs removed. Subsequent investigation by local police force fails to find a cause. 2012.01.23 19:11 - A woman is found dead and bisected in the local sawmill. Local police called. 2012.01.23 23:01 - Exorcists dispatched. Commence operation. Humanity is cursed, host to a roiling psychic sea barely understood or controlled, a phenomenon arising purely from the darkest portions of the human soul. While most humans are blissfully unaware of its presence, others are more sensitive. When it grows wild in these hosts, SINS appear, terrifying supernatural monsters that are anathema to reality itself. CAIN is the solution, the global supranational shadow organization dedicated solely to the hunting and execution of SINS. It’s mission is clear, its purpose steadfast. Is there anything better than a good hunt? Just think, you’re all set to slaughter to your heart’s content. YOU are an exorcist, a powerful psychic soldier and tool of CAIN, honed and wielded for one purpose: WIPE OUT THE STAIN

Pack your pencils, a fistfull of D6s, and come down to West End Games on Friday 6th September, it's going to get interesting. Please arrive at 18:00 for a 18:30 start.

Due to the nature and content of this game all players must be over the age of 18. Content Warnings: Abuse, Gore/Violence, Mob Violence/Lynching, Financial Poverty, Death/Murder.

[halfdent]

𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐀𝐆𝐄  𝐒𝐏𝐋𝐈𝐓  𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍  𝐓𝐇𝐄  𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄  .   One  side  APOLLO  the  latter  𝐃𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐘𝐒𝐔𝐒   .  It  reflects  the  internal  conflict  in  his  mind  .  BISECTED  INTO  TWO  PEOPLE  ESSENTIALLY  .  Most  of  the  time  .  There  were  others  but  HARVEY  DENT  &&  𝐓𝐖𝐎-𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄  were  the  host  &&  co-host  of  this  shell  corpse  they  called  home  .  An  incident  that  brought  about  the  prominent  scarring  ,  yet  these  scars  were  always  present  even  before  the  acid  had  hit  their  face  ...   only  before  they  had  been  concealed  behind  the  mask  of  a  man  who  only  ever  wanted  to  be  something  more  than  he  was  ;  a  man  who  desperately  wished  to  be  good  .  𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃  𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐒  𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓  𝐃𝐎  𝐁𝐀𝐃  𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒  .

❝    I'm  both  .❞   He  insists  .  ❝    Both  a  man  &&  a  monster  .  Both  good  &&  bad  .  Both  myself  &&  my  own  shadow  .  ❞ 

The  young  woman / @pomniegranate x / ,  she's  bright  ,  kind  even  .  It's  a  shame  this  world  doesn't  have  the  likeness  for  someone  like  that  ,  it's  not  intent  to  allow  that  veritable  compassion  to  linger  for  long  .  &&  So  it  goes  .

❝    You're  all  of  it  .  The  pieces  of  you  ,  you  feel  to  be  truth  &&  the  pieces  of  you  that  are  perceived  to  others  so  in  many  ways  you're  exactly  who  you  need  to  be  hinged  on  the  flip  of  a  coin  from  moment  to  moment  .  ❞ 

[transienturl]

man. running the bisect tool on chromium is really slow. entirely limited by the download speed on whatever google server hosts the chromium build history—I wonder if one can hack it to run off of, like, a torrent

[askskyetherayquaza]

Guess who got their cobblemon server and almost died trying to set it up Seriously, who thought setting up a server for friends was so much work, but now i get to play with crazy cobblemon sizes (I have a giant Air buddy)

Also thank you to Bisect Hosting and Ray for helping me get it up and running. Literal saint

[edgarxfortier]

𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒

Name: Edgar Michael Yang-Fortier

Age: 38

Occupation: Manager of Desert Bloom Winery

Affiliation: Donor for Obsidian Holdings

Gender & Pronouns: Man (he/him)

Languages spoken: English; French; Mandarin

DOB: March 18, 1986

Zodiac: Pisces

Blood type: AB+

Alignment: chaotic neutral

Gender: Cisgender man

Pronouns: he/him

Sexuality: demiromantic bisexual

Height: 6’2”

Eye color: Hazel

Hair color: Dark Brown

Religious affiliation: Buddhist

Scars: small scar bisecting left eyebrow

Tattoos: Many (including the majority of FC’s actual tattoos), mostly small. Most notable: snake on right forearm; fleur de lis on left ankle; koi fish on side of left wrist.

Faceclaim: Lewis Tan

𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘

tw death

Edgar Yang-Fortier had sold his soul to the devil. How else was he supposed to feel when the only thing he’d ever wanted, ever worked for, had been bought and sold through bribery and extortion? 

Edgar Yang-Fortier had grown up in relative luxury. For generations, the Fortier family had been renowned vintners. They’d started out in southern France only to immigrate to Paxton, Arizona a few decades back. It was then that Desert Bloom Winery was born, when Xavier Fortier met and married Daiyu Yang, the daughter of a local farmer. On paper, the match appeared to be blessed – Xavier had been born and bred into wine making knowledge, and Daiyu came from a long line of people who’d loved and cared for their parcel of land. Their two expertises, then, could be nothing less that fruitful. In practice, though, the match was ill fated from the start. 

Xavier Fortier was something of a monster who terrorized his young family behind closed doors. On top of that, over the years, he developed a gambling habit, often finding himself indebted to a variety of sources. So, it came as no surprise, then, when, on the occasion of his death a mere year ago, it was discovered that Desert Bloom Winery was so steeped in debt that there was simply no other option than to sell. 

It was then that Obsidian Holdings came knocking. Edgar had met and had a brief fling with Lindsey Gallagher during their college days, but college had ended and he’d returned to Paxton with the intent of taking over the winery, and had hardly thought twice about the woman in the years that followed. Finding her on his doorstep days after his father’s funeral had come as a surprise, but her offer had felt like an inevitability. 

Without the knowledge of his siblings, Edgar accepted the offer – sell the winery in all but name to Obsidian Holdings and continue to operate business as usual. The winery would host events when Obsidian needed and the Fortier-Yang family would become donors to the cause, but in the way that it counted – for pride’s sake – they would be able to hold on to their legacy.

The offer was clearly extortionary. Edgar could see all of the ways this could go up in flames, but he’d been given an opportunity to redeem and secure his family’s legacy and he would take it even if it required making a deal with the devil. His siblings aren’t aware of the inner workings of the deal. In their minds, he’s simply accepted a loan which has allowed him to push off some of the business’s debt for the time being, but Edgar knows better – he’s doomed himself all for the chance to save his family, and he’d do it again if he had to. 

𝐏𝐋𝐎𝐓 𝐀𝐑𝐂

Edgar likes to believe that he’s a neutral party. He’d grown up in this town, known both Randall and Alicia, but had never allowed himself to become enmeshed in the goings on of the Cowboy Mafia. As a donor to Obsidian Holdings, though, and the face of their newest acquisition, it’s difficult to remain neutral in this fight. He hates everything Obsidian stands for, hates who he has become, but recognizes that to save his family’s legacy, he would take that deal every sing time. 

[miirshroom]

Elden Ring Elemental Allegory Hypothesis

So there's a question that has been on my mind for a while: does this Buckler shield look like a Helium atom?

There is an episode of Stargate SG-1 called "The Torment of Tantalus". A researcher named Ernest Littlefield has been stranded alone on a alien planet for over 50 years since 1945. The planet was called Heliopolis and was at one point the centre of power for Ra - a parasitic snake-like alien that lived inside a human host and presented himself as a god to the people of Earth. But long before this the planet was once the meeting place of 4 alien groups who communicated using the universal language - atoms.

I think it possible that one of the more subtle layers of Elden Ring is in using references to the periodic table of the elements to fill in some gaps in knowledge.

Summation of Sets - counting Rivets and Gemstones

For reasons that will become apparent later, the Buckler Shield is actually not the best example to start with because it is too generic and represents a few too many possibilities. Two better examples would be the Riveted Shield and Moon of Nokstella as both examples could be construed as referencing the moon (Selene):

Riveted Wooden Shield: Outer ring: 12 electrons - magnesium (Mg) Inner detail: 22 electrons - titanium (Ti) Combined: 34 electrons - selenium (Se)

Moon of Nokstella: Ring of small gems: 34 electrons - selenium (Se) Gems in settings: 4 electrons - beryllium (Be) Combined: 38 electrons - strontium (Sr)

I had an entire other post breaking down the elements of the Moon of Nokstella. But here I will run through the Riveted Wooden Shield.

The Riveted Wooden Shield is starting equipment for the Warrior class and the image upon it is of a sword and tree. The most likely reading of this is that the "tree" is represented as a conifer above ground and it's root system below ground, and the sword bisects these horizontally. The odd curvature of lines above and below the sword tip suggests also that the sword pierces a round object - perhaps an eye or full moon. The aesthetic of the Warrior implies a connection with the Blind Swordsman who long ago sealed the God of Rot, and indeed the head piece of this set covers and blinds the right eye (from the vantage of someone looking at the character). The right eye is associated with the eye of Horus and the moon in contrast to the left eye being the eye of Ra and the sun.

Magnesium, Titanium, and Selenium are all elements with connection to Greece. Selenium is named for Selene, the Ancient Greek word for the moon. Being the synthesis of inner and outer rivets this indicates the end product of the Blue Dancer/Blind Swordsman's actions - creation of a moon. As discussed further with the Moon of Nokstella, I believe this to be creation of the black moon or dark moon as selenium is a dark silvery metal.

Titanium is named similarly for the Greek Titans. The Titans were the pre-Olympian gods such as Gaia (earth), her son and husband Uranus (sky), their 6 male children, and 6 female children. The most well know titan is Cronus, the leader of the Titans who castrated and overthrew his father Uranus to become the god associated with the sky and the planet Saturn. The eldest of the Olympians are offspring of Cronus and Rhea: Hestia (Vesta - Virgin goddess of the hearth), Demeter (Ceres/Isis), Hera (Juno), Poseidon (Neptune), and Zeus (Jupiter). Some other Titans of note are the titan Hyperion and titaness Theia whose offspring were Helios (sun), Selene (moon) and Eos (dawn). And also Iapetus, father of the Titans Atlas (who holds up the celestial spheres (stars) on his shoulders) and Prometheus (who brought fire to man).

The name of elemental magnesium "comes from Magnesia, a district of Thessaly (Greece) where the mineral magnesia alba was first found". The word "magnet" has a similar origin as natural lodestones were also found in Magnesia. In the 1st or 2nd century BC there was an astronomer and thaumaturge named Aglaonice of Thessaly who was best known as a sorceress able to 'make the moon disappear from the sky'. It is the speculation of modern astronomers that this means that she could predict the general timeframe when a lunar eclipse would occur.

"Plutarch wrote that she was "thoroughly acquainted with the periods of the full moon when it is subject to eclipse, and, knowing beforehand the time when the moon was due to be overtaken by the earth's shadow, imposed upon the women, and made them all believe that she was drawing down the moon." Peter Bicknell notes that in most lunar eclipses the Moon does not disappear completely, but simply takes on a reddish hue. The ancient sources which discuss Aglaonice do not describe such a change of colour and there is no suggestion that she failed to convince observers that she was able to draw down the Moon. Bicknell speculates that in the first and second centuries BC there was a period in which the Moon appeared significantly less bright during the lunar eclipse due to variations in solar activity, and this might explain this apparent inconsistency." - Wikipedia article on Aglaonice

Overall, the point is that the shield can be read as indicating a time when the old Titans were supplanted by their offspring and thrown under the earth. This coincided with the old concept of the moon being replaced with a new one, which may be characterized as a lunar eclipse. Note that the landscape of the Lands Between is built upon the bodies of giants, and those giants are of a size to operate the Giant's Forge. And in agreement with the ancient mythic nature of this reading the Warrior is the oldest of all Tarnished - as the selection screen indicates "they were all warriors once".

Speculation on the Buckler Shield

Helium (He) would actually tie in quite nicely with the themes of Elden Ring. Its name is derived from "Helios" the Greek god of the sun, as the element was first observed via 7-prism electromagnetic spectroscopy instruments aimed at the sun. The first recorded observation of helium occurred during an eclipse on 18 August 1868 (also called "The King of Siam's Eclipse") by French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen. But it was not identified as a new element until a second astronomer - Norman Lokyer - observed the same spectral reading from England in October 1868 and confirmed the discovery with the help of chemist Edward Frankland.

Helium is the only element to have been first discovered in outer space before being found on earth and is very abundant in both the sun and the planet Jupiter in our solar system. It was later found on earth and isolated by chemist William Ramsay in 1895. Ramsay was also known for discovering Neon, Argon, Krypton and Xenon, and for isolating and characterizing Radon in 1910. Helium has many industrial applications such as the cooling of superconducting magnets, arc welding, growing crystals for silicon wafers and as a safer gas for lifting airships than the flammable hydrogen gas. It is generated through alpha particle decay of radioactive elements.

Buckler

A small metal roundshield. The bump in the center enables parrying techniques. A well-timed parry can break an enemy's stance, allowing a critical hit. Best suited for those prepared to take the risk to reap their reward.

The Buckler is starting equipment for the bandit class, or sold by Gatekeeper Gostoc. And based on this available information there is nothing that immediately stands out as relating to the shield being connected to helium. Although helium does have a fairly stable nucleus relative to its neighbours hydrogen and lithium, it is not what it is known for, and it is certainly not a metal. The description of the bump in the centre enabling parrying brings to mind the way that the nuclei of atoms will prefer to repel each other, thus performing nuclear fusion requires particles to be accelerated towards each other at very high speeds. Californium and Berkelium have been produced by bombarding Curium with alpha particles, Mendelevium is produced by bombarding Einsteinium with alpha particles.

There is a secondary explanation that fits - which is actually the first one that I had thought of. There is a theme in Elden Ring of shells. Turtles have shells that are symbolic of protecting secrets, snakes have shells (which don't match their species), the sorcerers have trays of shells sitting in their rises. One of the successful models of the atom is to arrange the electrons in shells, where the valence electrons in the outermost shell are available for bonding. It was coincidentally Edward Frankland again who introduced the concept of valence in the same year as the discovery of helium.

The Buckler is made of an unspecified metal, and as it happens there are many elements which are found with 2 valence electrons in their outer shell. These include Zinc (Zn), Iron (Fe), Nickel (Ni), Cobalt (Co), Yttrium (Y), Vanadium (V), Scandium (Sc), Technetium (Tc), Cadmium (Cd), Lutetium (Lu), Hafnium (Hf), Tantalum (Ta), Tungsten (W), Rhenium (Re), Osmium (Os), Iridium (Ir), Mercury (Hg). As well as the entire alkaline earth metal group of Beryllium (Be), Magnesium (Mg), Calcium (Ca), Strontium (Sr), Barium (Ba), and Radium (Ra). Whittled down the periodic table to a mere 23 or so entries of interest - not bad! And at least 10 of these (in bold) were already thought by me to be elements of interest.

And by the traces of rust on the shield the "metal" in question could be simply iron. Iron has two electrons in the outer shell and is the heaviest element produced by the sun with nuclear fusion. Iron represents a transition point - for lighter elements energy is produced by nuclear fusion and for heavier elements energy is produced by nuclear fission. Although the Earth's core is largely composed of iron, most available elemental iron in the earth's crust originated from meteorites.

This post is just an introduction to the kinds of things that I'm thinking about, really. Assuming the convention that rivets represent electrons there are so many other shields to sift through and cross reference with the other known information to confirm a real pattern. Other possible elemental references I have noticed: the variety of flame colours found in game being reminiscent of the colours produced in burning metals for flame tests; characters whose names or story themes represent mythological figures who have elements named for them; characters whose names contain a syllable that is a standard abbreviation for an element; and known types of metals incorporated in descriptions and visuals like gold, silver, copper, bronze, brass, iron, steel, etc.

And also, the buckler shield may be present in Elden Ring but it originated at least as early as Dark Souls. So that begs the question of how long ago could FromSoft have started playing with elemental metaphor go that uses the true atomic elements of the periodic table as inspiration lurking beneath an alchemical framing device.

[lilmissnatcat24]

Turn Left Ch 27- The Monty Hall Problem

Forces work to separate Shepard and Garrus just as things heat up. (CW: drug use)

Relationship: Femshep/Garrus Vakarian

Archive Warnings in author's note

Additional tags: enemies to friends to lovers, slow burn, slow build, alternate universe- canon divergence, detective noir, sex club, anonymous sex, canon temporary character death, murder mystery, drug use, dom garrus vakarian, whump, smut, heavy angst, alien sex, dual pov, an overly sexual elcor named candy, earthborn, ruthless, fake/pretend relationship, dead dove: do not eat, identity porn, minor character death

Detective AU mixed with identity porn mixed with so much whump my fingers are bleeding

(or, start from the beginning here)

lil text blurb:

“You wanted to see me, sir?” 

The glass case that surrounded Medina’s office gave Shepard the distinct feeling as if she were a lobster in one of those all-you-can-eat buffets just waiting to be boiled alive and dunked in obscene amounts of butter. She always liked to say that Medina had a glass office because he was into some kinky exhibitionist shit and enjoyed torturing his officers with everyone else in the precinct watching as if it were some gruesome spacecar crash that they couldn’t turn away from. Today was no exception. 

His voice on the tool was strained and oddly formal when he asked Shepard where she was. Of course, she couldn’t exactly say she was hosting two fugitives in a C-Sec appointed safehouse, now could she? So she lied, like she did so often that came out easier and faster than the truth, spinning some yarn that she was meeting one of her moles that was starting to feel a little queasy about their placement. Medina didn’t yell, he didn’t raise his voice-- which for him was absolutely a first. In a chokingly polite way, he asked that Shepard come see him as soon as she possibly could, as it was a sensitive matter of great importance. And he actually said those words in that order like it was fucking 1876 or something. 

Medina, not looking up at Shepard, gestured down to the seat in front of his desk that she was convinced was designed with absolutely zero comfort and one hundred percent torture in mind. His eyes, jet black and piercing, were trained on his hands, his periwinkle tattoos bisecting his face in half down his nose and mouth. Shepard didn’t know if it was because she was spending a whole lot of time with turians lately, but she swore she could hear his subvocals. Or at least, she could feel the rumbling underneath her feet, as if they were an old generator running in another room. 

“Sit. Please. Do you want a water? Coffee?” Oh fuck. Medina was not a nice man. He didn’t do polite smalltalk. Either he was about to hurl the table across the office and shatter one of the walls, or he was about to tell Shepard that he was terminally ill, there was no in between. She shook her head. “Alright then. I’m going to give you a chance first. Do you want to tell me why you think you’re in my office right now?” 

Shepard had no clue. And this time, she wasn’t kidding around. She had gotten into so much trouble lately, the list of Reasons Why Medina Would Call Her Into His Office was so long that it stretched out past her desk and snaked itself onto the floor. So she shook her head, staring pointedly down at her knees. She figured the less blabbing she did, the chances that she would park her foot right in her mouth were present. 

“Nothing? Nothing at all that would make you think that I would want to talk to you?” 

“I paid Trent in Hacking fifty creds to jimmy the vending machines to my touch ID so that I get free protein bars,” Shepard blurted out. Medina just stared at her for what seemed like minutes, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. 

He reached underneath his desk for a datapad, tossing it forward until it skidded to a halt in front of Shepard. Hands shaking slightly, she picked it up, expecting the very worst. Her leading a charge against Fist in Chora’s Den, her breaking Wrex out of prison, her housing a fugitive, her letting Benezia’s daughter murder two asari in front of the precinct…